Census Data

last updated on: 24th Feb 2015

The more we understand our parishes, those that live in them and their needs, the more we can serve God in being effective in mission.

How many people live in your parish? How old are they, what are their most pressing social needs? What’s their ethnic, faith or education background? What's their health like, areas of employment or lack of it and the resultant deprivation?

With thanks to the hard work of the Research and Statistics team from the Church of England nationally, the 2011 census data has now been combined with some parish attendance and financial information, the previous (2001) census plus a range of other government information to create a Parish Spotlight for each parish in the Diocese.

These Parish Spotlights contain key information, represented in a graphical format, together with some of the questions it raises. It is free to download, analyse and use below. We are deliberately making every parish’s available to everyone so that together we might best understand the needs of the areas we collectively minister in.

If you have specific questions on the data itself please contact the national team at statistics.unit@churchofengland.org

To discuss the implications for mission and how we might use the Spotlights in more effective mission contact Diocesan Mission Enabler, Barry Hill here.

Below the list of churches (which have been organised into Deaneries, with some geographical description as to the area covered by each Deanery for those less familiar) there are some further explanatory notes which might help you understand sudden changes or missing data. It would be helpful to read this alongside the Statistics for Mission, a more in depth summary of attendance, Church service and those joining and leaving the worshipping community. The 2012 report can be downloaded here.

Making the most of these reports‘Interesting data, but what do we do with it?!’ A good question. For those looking to engage with it, here’s one four step possibility:
1. Give everyone on the Church Council, leadership team, ministry team or Standing Committee a copy in advance of meeting and ask them to circle three things that surprised them and three things that confirmed what they already knew
2. Compare what people have found, note similarities, encouragements where existing ministries meet a need, challenges where they do not and surprises
3. Pray through, discuss and discern whether God is using this to nudge the parish towards reaching out into an area of need previously unmet
4. Consider what partners there might be (‘people of peace’ to use the terminology from Luke 10) to help with this

The City of Leicester DeaneryWhere is it? Pretty much co-terminus as the City itself

The national Research and Statistics Department of the Church of England, have provided some additional explanatory notes which might help you understand missing data, and estimations:

Attendance and Finance data
Attendance and Finance data have been compiled from annual parochial returns. As you will be aware we do not get a 100% response rate each year and the data in this spotlight do not contain any estimates. The Spotlights are at the parish level, so where there are statistics for multiple churches in a parish, these have been amalgamated. Where there have been pastoral reorganisations the data may show jumps in figures, or gaps in the data. To help you to understand any particular parish results the raw data is in an excel sheet at the bottom of this page. The national team has also in recent months undergone some intense cleaning of the data, so figures may differ to those previously issued.

Parish structures
These spotlights have been compiled using our best [national] knowledge of the geographic make-up of the country. Your diocese may well have churches that work outside the parish system, or work in different geographies such as conventional districts or guild churches. These churches may not appear in the list of pdfs, however the population data for the geographic parish overlaying the area will be of relevance. If there are specific areas for which you would like a community focused spotlight, without annual parochial returns data, or with annual parochial returns data for different churches then please do contact us with further details about these areas. These structures are accurate as at March 2013, however the annual parochial returns data are accurate as of 2011, so in areas of considerable pastoral reorganisation there may be mismatches between the geography and the churches for which the annual parochial returns data refer. Once again, please do contact us if there are any specific areas for which you would like us to produce a revised spotlight.

“Centroid” and “non centroid” spotlights
The community data is based on various government sources, including the 2011 census. Government boundaries do not match our ecclesiastical parish boundaries so best fit modelling is required. The method we have used is to take the smallest geography for which population data are released (called an Output Area), represent that area with a single dot (placed in the middle of where the people live in that area, called a “Centroid”), and then allocate that population to the parish within which the dot falls. This gives the parish its population count and is a standard best-fit modelling technique. It does mean, however, that for some parishes no dot falls into the boundary, so we are not able to allocate a population count. For these parishes we have given some broad percentages to reflect the population instead.

Church Statistics only spotlights
There are a number of parishes where we have annual parochial returns data, but we cannot allocate this to a geography on the ground (and therefore community data). This could be due to pastoral reorganisation, or churches that work outside the parish system. We have included these as a series of Spotlights with very limited data for your information. You may wish to distribute these with the relevant geographic areas.

Excel files
Excel files of the community focussed data are available on our website. http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats/research-statistics/census-2011.aspx